One of the scientists who worked on the development of the Higgs boson theory has backed calls for it to be given a name reflecting more than just one man.

The debate comes a few weeks after CERN announced it had only one remaining variable to eliminate before confirming that the particle discovered through the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 was indeed the Higgs boson, the name given to a hypothetical particle that explains how objects have mass.

Professor Carl Hagen has spoken to UK media outlets including the BBC, who he told “To single out one individual marginalises the contribution of others involved in the work. Although I did not start this campaign to change the name, I welcome it.”

Although Higgs came up with the theory behind the jigsaw-completing particle, at least five other men played significant roles in the 40 years of work that led to the CERN discovery: Robert Brout, Francois Englert, Gerald Guralnik, Tom Kibble and Hagen himself.

CERN says it’s up to the particle physics community to coin and adopt names for parts. It’s previously used the term “Standard Model Scalar Boson” in official documentation, though that appears to be designed to avoid any confusion if the discovery turned out not to match the Higgs model.

Even if the “Higgs boson” name falls from use, it’s not clear what would replace it. One idea is the Brout-Englert-Higgs or BEH particle, reflecting the fact that Brout and Englert published papers on the subject shortly before Higgs.

Another is to honor all six men with the name BEHGHK, with a suggestion it could just about form an acronym, clumsily pronounced as “berk.” That would seem particularly unfortunate given that word derives from British rhyming slang which we will simply explain here as being a shortened form of “Berkeley Hunt.”

Higgs himself hasn’t commented on the name, though he has recently argued against the use of the term “God particle” as a casual alternative. He said “I know that name was a kind of joke and not a very good one. I think [writers Leon Lederman and Dick Teresi] shouldn’t have done that as it’s so misleading.

The debate about the name is further fueled by speculation that work on the Higgs boson will be the subject of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics. That could cause further awkwardness as Nobel rule say only three people (all living) can share a single prize. Of the six men involved, only Professor Brout has passed away, meaning at least two people would have to be left off the citation.

(Image courtesy of Theodore Gray.com, which offers custom poster prints of your chosen name in periodic table elements.)